Photographer Page

Frans Lanting

An elephant strolls through the lobby of a Luangwa Valley Lodge in Zambia, after remodeling blocked the animal’s access to a mango tree in the hotel courtyard. ‘‘Though the image is whimsical at first glance, it points to a profound issue: Both elephants and people have laid routes across Africa, many of them crisscrossing each other. Now it’s up to us humans to figure out how to coexist in these shared spaces,’’ photographer Frans Lanting wrote in the September 2005 issue.

Photographer Frans Lanting captured this lone bull elephant feigning a charge at a water hole in the Okavango Delta. The image was first published in his National Geographic book, Forgotten Edens: Exploring the World's Wild Places, in January 1993.

California sea lions snooze in the sun on Ano Nuevo Island, Monterey Bay. Sea lions rely on the sun to keep warm—and then cool back down by dunking a flipper into the water then raising it into the air.

Monarch butterflies open their wings to catch some rays in Michoacan, Mexico. Basking is critical to the butterfly's migration, as the sunshine warms its body up so that it can take flight.

A ring-tailed lemur sunbathes at the Berenty Reserve, Madagascar. Although these mammals can generate their own body heat, they seek out heat from the sun so that their metabolism doesn't have to do all the work.

A tuatara clings to a rock near New Zealand's shore. Tuataras are nicknamed "living fossils," as their appearances haven't changed much since the Jurassic era.

Hippos fight in the Luangwa River, Zambia, as their water supplies shrink toward the end of the dry season. Zambia has the largest population of hippos in all of Africa.

Deep in the Peruvian rainforest, a young scarlet macaw flies for the first time. Macaws can live for 50 years on average, although some in captivity can live up to 90 years.

Giant tortoises gather at dawn on Isabela Island in the Galápagos archipelago in the Pacific. Darwin was amazed by the large number and variety of these animals. Living for a century or more, they are native to the remote archipelago, to which they have given their name: galápago, a Spanish word meaning “tortoise.”